


Veins

by flecksofpoppy



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: F/F, Ficlet, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-05
Updated: 2011-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:44:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flecksofpoppy/pseuds/flecksofpoppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Words, dried leaves, and silence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Veins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wingeddserpent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/gifts).



> For my "non-mainstream pairing" prompt request and it's my first FFXII fic. Have mercy. Oh god, please have mercy. I tried. The angst oozes out of me so steadily it's just not okay.

Ashe has seen leaves pressed between pieces of brown paper in a vice. As a child, she would wonder about these strange forms, the veins, the papery, delicate texture in such stark contrast to the distant mounds of the desert and rain of her kingdom.

When they travel to Eruyt Village, for the first time Ashe smells leaves in their true form. She tries to listen to the Viera as they murmur: _"The Wood says..."_ And she sees that Fran is silent. _"The green word..."_ , and still, even after opening this sacred path, Fran is silent.

Ashe has heard many words in her time. _Rasler, murder, ascension, homeland._ She doubts the last in deepest sleep. Occasionally she looks to her ancestor for guidance, the imagined Dynast King, in her weakest moments. She was but a girl when she married Rasler; and so in love, the way that only a child upon the verge of adulthood can be.

She sees his visage in shadow, in the green Wood, in sunlight, everywhere.

When they're driven out for their stench, and Ashe sees what it's like to have sisters with discord, to have siblings; she wonders about those leaves. Those plants that aren't dry, that aren't dead estuaries that have long stopped flowing.

She says to Fran: "When you listen, what do you hear?"

And Fran, coming to her afterwards, with a still face and her ears perked, says: "I only hear whispers on the wind."

Ashe pushes her hands behind Fran's neck, the cold metal armor reminding her of the Hume world, of her world, of the taste of defeat, of blood even in her effervescent dreams of her child husband. Of the time that she loved, of the time that she thought she was prudent when she was naive.

Ashe pushes her hands behind Fran's neck, and says, "Tell me," kisses her, as only a fallen queen can, haggardly and desperately and quietly, so that Balthier won't hear.

When Ashe speaks, her voice is as flat as petals pressed between paper, slowly bleeding color. Her voice is the sound of dark, dry nights; sand, flaking leaves, steel.

"Tell me," she says again, "what the green wood tells you."

And Fran kisses her back, so that she won't have to answer with silence.


End file.
